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Atelier Van Lieshout

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Biography

Sculptor Joep van Lieshout was born in 1963 in Ravenstein, The Netherlands. After graduating from De Ateliers, Amsterdam, van Lieshout established his eponymous studio, Atelier Van Lieshout, in 1995. Today, the workshop is made up of more than 20 artists and designers whose works can be found in private and public collections around the world.

Atelier Van Lieshout´s studio is situated in a large warehouse in the harbours of Rotterdam. The artworks begin their lives here, before being transported across the globe to their next destination. The designers, artists, craftsmen and metalworkers who work with van Lieshout are intimately involved in the manufacturing process of each product, ensuring that each piece is the result of a collective effort.

Over the last three decades van Lieshout has produced work that straddles the fields of art, design, and architecture, creating pieces that question and parody power structures and systems. At the heart of his work is a desire to undermine the myth of the artistic genius. Not afraid to embrace taboo, van Lieshout believes that “art should be a place where there are very few limits.” His 2015 sculpture ‘Domestikator’ was pulled from public display at the Louvre due to fears that it would be interpreted as a depiction of bestiality.

AVL have gained international recognition for their sculptural installations featuring controversial or sinister nuances. Alongside playful perversion, their work conveys disdain for limitation and a longing for freedom. Sensory Deprivation Skull allows the experience of entering one’s own head, offering a period and place of mental respite. Wellness Skull houses a sauna and a bath within its form, proffering more hedonistic relaxation.

As well as producing sculptural pieces and large installations, Atelier van Lieshout also creates functional art pieces. The Lust for Life collection, shown at Carpenters Workshop Gallery London in early 2018, featured a series of lamps from their ongoing body of work. The exhibition was an exploration of the precarious balance between utopia and destruction and a reflection on the course of life. Van Lieshout explained that this body of work was about “enjoying life and embracing every part of it. Whether it is life, death, dancing, getting old, contemplating or reproducing, all those things are essential parts of human life. And of course, it is about having lust all your life”.

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